


Them Wild-Eyed Boys That Had Been Away

by RidleyMocki



Series: Pynch fics [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Multi, Road Trips, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, TW: Homophobia, but mostly total floof, implied polyamorous closed triad, no overt homophobia theyre just wary of its possibility, pynch week 17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 11:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11713785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RidleyMocki/pseuds/RidleyMocki
Summary: When Adam turned to him one night and said, “I wonder if there’s magic anywhere else,” Ronan couldn’t see a reason why they shouldn’t try to find out.So they went, packed up the car with too many snacks and probably too few shirts, and started to drive.





	Them Wild-Eyed Boys That Had Been Away

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pynch Week 17 to the prompt 'Road Trips'. I had quite a bit of fun with this, which was nice because wow, fic fatigue. 
> 
> The homophobia tag is in relation to Ronan and Adam limiting the extent to which they're visibly together, just because they want to avoid confrontation or comment from other so they can keep their trip pleasant. No actual confrontations are had.
> 
> Title is from 'The Boys Are Back In Town' by Thin Lizzy, because it's perfect for this, come on.
> 
> Thank you so very much for reading! Pynch Week has been awesome and challenging as hell, and you guys make it worth it. One day to go! Enjoy!

When Adam turned to him one night and said, “I wonder if there’s magic anywhere else,” Ronan couldn’t see a reason why they shouldn’t try to find out.

There were still a few weeks before Adam had to be at college, and they’d done just about everything they could with these long, hot swathes of sunlit days, and especially while the rest of their gang was away. 

So they went, packed up the car with too many snacks and probably too few shirts, and started to drive.

“We’re going to get lost,” Adam said.

“That’s the point.”

………………………………………..

They dropped Opal off at the witches’ house – _they’re psychics, Ronan, god_ – and were fooled into staying for lunch. The house was as eclectic as ever, so they had grapefruit halves, and bits of prosciutto wrapped around slices of rock melon, home-made tea coulis over wholemeal pancakes. Maura had to wrestle the container of pancake batter away from Calla so she wouldn’t make rude shapes with their food. 

Opal ate happily, her hoofed feet swinging off the edge of the chair, eating the grapefruit pith and all. She didn’t need babysitting, not really. She was too Other and ancient to really be mistaken for a child. But it wasn’t fair to leave her alone, either.

And it wasn’t fair that with Blue away and Persephone gone, this house – though never capable of reaching quiet – had grown a little emptier. It was clear in the way Maura set out too much cutlery for them and touched her hand to Ronan’s shoulder that she was missing her daughter. It wasn’t so much about having Ronan and Adam to lunch as it was about having people close to her daughter be also close to her. 

“Where are you going to go?” Maura asked them, swilling a glass of sweet liquid packed with slices of lime and mint leaves. 

“Don’t know,” Adam said, and shoved a bit of pancake with prosciutto into his mouth, ever the opportunistic eater. “We just want to see what there is.”

“Well you’ll see plenty,” Calla said with a scoff. “Not guaranteed that you’ll like it, though.”

“I seem to remember you doing several things that you knew you wouldn’t like, just because you were free to do it,” Maura said with a teasing smile, and folded her legs under her on the chair.

“That’s my point.” Calla threw a plastic teaspoon at her. “You’re free to explore, and then free to decide to never do it again, thank god. The in-between is just growth.”

“Is this lunch or a reading?” Ronan groused.

“I can still read _people_ , Snake.” Calla grinned at him, in an uncharacteristically good mood; which meant she was still a pain in the ass, she just did it with a smile on her face.

With clunking steps meant to announce her arrival, Orla came down the stairs, trailing the smell of summer flowers and sunscreen. “There are my favourite lover boys!” She cried when she saw them, and Ronan would have laughed at the way Adam grew rigid, if it hadn’t been for the fact he did the same. “How have you been?!” She floated behind Adam where he sat and ruffled his hair, pressing a smacking kiss to his forehead. She went to do the same to Ronan, but when he grumbled and swore, and swatted her away she just launched at him and enveloped him in a hug instead. Adam laughed loud and bright at the look of outrage on his face. 

“You look ridiculous,” Ronan growled, and she finally released him. Her crop top was almost neon pink and her shorts looked like they’d been through a paper shredder. Blue could roll her eyes at her cousin all she liked but they were not totally dissimilar. Orla just laughed, a tinkling thing, and sat down to grab a grapefruit. She passed her pith to Opal, who rewarded her with a toothy smile. 

When they left it was later than they had counted on, the sunlight already turning orange, but they would have enough hours of daylight to at least make it to the next town over.

Maura framed Adam’s face with her hands for a brief second, looked between them and said, “Be safe.”

“You’d know if we weren’t,” Adam said immediately, and Maura cheerily hummed in a _maybe_ fashion. 

“Remember, do everything I would do,” Calla called to them from the door.

When they were in the BMW again and Ronan pulled onto the road, he turned to Adam and said, “There is no fucking way we’re doing everything she would do.” They left Henrietta on the sound of Adam’s laughter.

…………………………..

Apart from Gansey family functions, Ronan knew Adam had never really been anywhere outside their poky town. This was a first for him, an exercise in autonomy. They stayed in barely-there little towns, crashing at a motel late at night then exploring in the morning, setting off again in the afternoon. They didn’t have a list of sights to see; if they happened upon something then so be it. The point was movement; feeling the rubber band that kept them tied to Henrietta stretch and stretch and wondering at what point it would snap. 

Being outside Henrietta was odd. The town ebbed and flowed around them. It was easy to be there. They’d been gone three days and already it was like the outside world was trying to remould them. 

They didn’t hold hands if they could be seen, always sat opposite each other at a diner or café. Ronan found himself readying to throw his arm around Adam’s shoulders as they walked together, and had to hold himself back. If they could they would get rooms with two doubles and let one go unused; if they couldn’t, Adam would push two single beds together and they’d deal with the dip in the middle.

Ronan was tempted to challenge people, to order a room with one bed, to reach across the space between them and cup Adam’s cheek, kiss him for all to see. But things like that weren’t neutral when it was two young men, even if they should have been. They weren’t on this trip to fist fight their way across America. It was just about them, and they didn’t want to risk anyone else sticking their nose in.

It wasn’t bad, if you didn’t dwell on it. They knew who they were and knew what they had and it was good. Being selective about showing that was a compromise they made to keep this little road trip the way they wanted it.

It didn’t stop them from kissing in the car before they left town, or losing themselves in each other in the middle of the night. There was nothing ambiguous about one bed rumpled and one left untouched. 

…………………………..

“Enjoy, honey,” their waitress said to Adam, setting a vanilla milkshake in front of him. She smiled at him, a smile that grew a little tight when she directed it at Ronan, but she did her best. 

“I hate that,” Adam said quietly, as they hoed into their eggs. 

“Hate what?” Ronan knew what, but Adam’s words invited the question.

“The way they look at you. Like you’re no good.” Adam ate his egg and bacon with prejudice – cutlery squeaking against the ceramic – staring furiously into the middle space like he was imagining his retribution. If he hadn’t been so serious, Ronan might have laughed at his expression, the perfect righteous outrage.

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Ronan said instead, “that’s kind of what I’m going for.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, no shit. I just…”

“You just?” Ronan prompted, as Adam massacred another fried tomato with his fork.

Adam shook his head. “I just wish they didn’t look at you like that, is all.”

Ronan felt something warm curl in his chest and seize him tightly. He remembered how Henry had told him weeks before how hard Adam had blushed when he’d called Ronan his boyfriend in front of them, while Ronan wasn’t there. Henry had pressed a hand to his own grin as he said how pleased Adam seemed about the word.

“I don’t want people to know me the way you know me,” Ronan said, hands gone still over his plate.

Adam sighed. “I know. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like that about us. It’s just, when other people meet you– Their first impression isn’t true. Justified, because you insist on being the maximum amount of asshole you can and dressing like a punk, but it’s not _accurate_. They shouldn’t write you off like that.” The idea that Adam was proud to be with him still twisted Ronan’s head from time to time, feeling impossible. If he allowed himself to believe it, though, he could see why it might be infuriating to have strangers turn a nose up at someone you cherished.

Ronan reached under the table and put a hand on Adam’s knee. “I don’t give a shit what they think, Parrish. So long as you know.”

Adam smiled sadly. “I do.”

“Good.”

They ate and talked about the small stuff; how many of their friends were actually sleeping together, whether Opal and Gwynllian were getting along, getting Adam’s car certified roadworthy before he started semester.

In the end, Adam slurped the dregs of his milkshake so loud and so obnoxiously that by the time they left, they were both receiving reproachful looks, anyway. 

……………………………………….

What Ronan couldn’t say in that conversation, was that people weren’t just looking at him and making a hard judgement, they were looking at him next to Adam.

In black head to toe, tattooed talons and feathers stretching over his neck and shoulders, cold eyes and a whip sharp smile, Ronan was about as far away from the picture of provincial quaintness some of these towns distilled. He was hazardous, the sort of thing a local sheriff on his coffee break would spin around in his chair just to monitor.

That was one thing, to look like trouble personified.

It was a whole other thing to be the trouble that trailed behind a boy who looked like the goddamn American dream.

Adam passed through these towns like their patron saint, a blue-jeaned, blonde-haired vision of youth. Strangers were helpless but to like him, to offer him a free piece of pie with coffee, wish him well and actually mean it. Adam had asked if there was magic anywhere else, but as the days wore on Ronan wondered if he hadn’t just brought it with him. 

The people they passed saw Adam and were struck with an instant loyalty, the kind he never got in Henrietta outside of their little group. Ronan couldn’t blame them, knew from experience the futility of resisting that pull. But then they saw Ronan, violence holding his head up and keeping his shoulders back, and their reproachful looks weren’t just a _go away_ , but a _get away from him_. Like Adam was shiny chrome and Ronan was corrosive against him.

But Ronan didn’t think it would help Adam’s ire to point it out, that part of people’s prejudice was the contrast between the two of them. 

Instead, at night, he would reach across the shitty motel bed and pull a sleepy Adam into his chest. They would wake up overwarm and uncomfortable, but the moment where they caught each other’s eye was worth it a thousand times over.

…………………………………….

Days passed in the lazy way that summer had perfected. When Adam drove, Ronan would look at him for long seconds, the scenery outside flying by so fast that Adam was the only thing in focus. They’d talk about nonsense; how to hypothetically kidnap a polar bear, how many presidents drew dicks on their high school tables, who was the victor between pizza and burritos. Being able to voice all their most half-brained ridiculous ideas to each other was an intimacy that they’d had long before they got together, and it hadn’t changed. 

They’d been away ten days when Adam, one hand steady on the wheel, used the other to fling a Skittle in the air and catch it in his mouth. “I’ve never been more attracted to you than I am right now,” Ronan said emphatically, and Adam’s laughter rippled through him like magic. 

In a town whose beginning was an idyllic bubbling stream with a white bridge, they stopped for gas and to stock up on snacks. When Ronan came out of the gas station he saw Adam jogging back towards him from across the road. “What the hell Par–“ Adam stopped in front of him and, like a sneak attack, stuck a pink carnation behind Ronan’s ear. Sputtering, Ronan looked back across the street to see an old lady at a flower stand waving cheerily at them. 

He looked back at Adam in surprise.

“It’s alright,” Adam said as he laughed, “we were chatting and she has a wife. I told her about you.”

Ronan rolled his eyes and dipped his chin at the woman. “You’re an idiot,” he grumbled, and Adam’s smile grew. Ronan stuck the carnation into the disc slot of his car stereo and that’s where it stayed.

…………………………………….

They had a fight about money at 2:00am outside the diner where they’d just eaten. The inevitability of this exact argument made them tired of it from the outset. Ronan paid for dinner like he’d done the majority of times this trip and Adam glared daggers at him and stormed outside. 

Ronan didn’t do it to have power over him. He didn’t do it to show off or even because he thought Adam couldn’t pay. He did it for expediency, because it was less awkward than divvying up a bill. He did it because he knew that Adam would pay him back, would make sure they were as equal as possible. He said as much.

But Adam didn’t want to feel like he was kept, said that’s exactly how it made him feel. If this whole trip was meant to be about freedom then he should pay his way. Just because they were dating didn’t give Ronan an excuse to take everything over. He didn’t need anybody to take care of him.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ronan was yelling and he hated it. “You can’t be in a relationship and not need anybody at the same time!”

“Why not?!” Adam was nearly shaking.

“Because I fucking need you!” It slipped out, and Adam stared at him with wide eyes. “Don’t you get it? I could pay for this whole damn trip and it _still_ wouldn’t mean that you need me more than I need you.”

Adam let out a breath like it’d been punched out of him. Ronan looked out over the carpark, hands in fists at his sides and his whole body rigid. Inside him everything stormed, the feeling he’d given something away he couldn’t get back. Adam waited him out, and Ronan didn’t know if he was silent because he didn’t know how to help or because he had nothing to say. After a few minutes, Ronan’s hands unclenched and he walked slowly over to the car, Adam following carefully behind.

They were tired and hurt when they got back to the motel, their room presenting them with two beds, one rumpled, one pristine. Adam looked uncertainly between the two and Ronan sighed, kicked off his shoes, and held his hand out to him. Adam’s whole body seemed to deflate in relief, and his eyes were shiny when he took Ronan’s hand carefully. They climbed into the same bed, still in their clothes, hands clasped but a cautious valley of space between them. 

Ronan was at the very edge of sleep when it changed. “Don’t let me fuck this up,” Adam whispered to him in the dark, voice breaking. In a heartbeat Ronan was reaching out and pulling him into his body, pressing kisses to his brow as Adam shook against him, until they slept.

…………………………………….

They were driving along a highway when the forest either side began to look wonderfully, reminiscently like Cabeswater. Ronan pulled the car over into the dirt and they climbed out, making their way into the trees. It was a stupid thing to do, go wandering in unfamiliar forestland without having told anyone they were doing so, but they’d done worse. Would probably do so again.

It wasn’t Cabeswater, of course. The trees didn’t speak Latin. It didn’t play music for them, and the sun in the sky continued to arc along its usual path. But the shade of green was just right, the dewy smell sharp and vivid, and every now and again a tree had the audacity to look familiar. It wasn’t magic but it cast a spell nonetheless, drawn from memories and longing. It was dusk when they found their way back to the car. 

The next day, Adam bought a West Virginia road map from the corner store of whatever town they were in now, took a black marker and drew a circle around the patch of land that illustrated that forest. He grinned at Ronan with the pen cap still in his mouth, map spread out over the dash, and his eyes looked like adventure.

…………………………………….

The thing that they had neglected to do was inform their friends that they weren’t still in Henrietta. “Where the devil are you, Ronan?” Gansey said to him frantically through the phone, the phone that Ronan had only just powered on, after it had been dead for three days, and had immediately started ringing.

“Calm down, Dick, we’re… Adam where the fuck are we?”

Adam came out of the bathroom of their shitty motel room, towel around his hips and hair dripping. He reached out for the phone and put it on speaker when Ronan handed it over. “Hey Gans, how’s it going?” he said cheerily, and Ronan grinned at him.

“It was going spectacularly until we discovered your absence. We’re in Henrietta, where are you?”

“Hi guys!” They heard Henry yell in the background.

“Hi!” Adam chuckled. “Glad you guys got back safe.”

“Yeah and no chewing us out for not communicating when you assholes didn’t tell us when you’d be back,” Ronan groused. He was anxious to see Gansey and the others, and if he covered it with irritation that was his prerogative.

“Point,” a voice that was obviously Blue’s said. “Greetings, by the way. Or whatever.”

“Hey, Blue. Look we’ve been doing a loop around the state, we shouldn’t be more than half a day’s drive away. You want us to come back?” At this Adam looked at Ronan a little hesitantly, half asking him, as well, if that was alright. Ronan, caught between his want to see the others, his want to stay on the road with Adam, and his want to end the phone call immediately and do something about Adam’s state of undress, didn’t know how to reply. 

“What? No,” Blue said, “Don’t cut your trip short for us.”

“Well this thing doesn’t exactly have a projected end point, apart from college in two weeks,” Adam said. 

“We can come to you!” Gansey exclaimed, and Ronan had the ridiculous image of a light bulb lighting up above Gansey’s head, his index finger pointing skywards. “If that’s alright. We have no plans.”

Adam looked at him, and raised his eyebrows in silent question. Ronan was still struggling a little too much with the path a droplet of water was making down Adam’s chest, but he collected himself and nodded. He really did want to see them.

“That’d be great, guys. We’ll meet in the middle, I’ll text you the details.” He hung up to a chorus of delighted whooping. Adam got busy on the phone, looking up where they actually were, sending a screenshot to Gansey, then seeing what was further down the road, looking for a diner or something. 

Ronan came up behind him and pressed his cheek to the side of Adam’s head, uncaring for his wet hair. Adam’s thumb paused on the screen but took up their work again in a moment. Smiling small, Ronan nudged the edge of Adam’s ear with his nose, and brought his lips down to Adam’s neck. The kisses he pressed there were light, but full of intent. He brought a hand up to his waist and Adam’s hands went totally still.

“Check out is at ten, Ro,” he said, but his voice came out teasing.

Ronan hummed. “You think they’re gonna kick us out?”

Adam turned to face him, hooking a finger into a belt loop of Ronan’s black jeans. “They can try. I’m almost sure I don’t care,” he said, and began back-stepping towards the bed. 

They had to pause half way through making out for Adam to send Gansey the details of where to meet, but then Ronan was being pressed into the mattress and things outside of that room quickly stopped mattering. 

They checked out of the dicey little motel at 10:04, and Adam joked that Ronan’s perpetual scowl scared the guy out of asking for the late fee. Ronan was pretty sure it was the hickey poking out of his t-shirt, though.

…………………………………….

Ronan laughed when he pulled up to the address Adam had been directing him towards for the last few hours. The pizza place was nondescript, but managed it in eerily the same way that _Nino’s_ managed it back home. Neon lights in pink and blue to match the setting sky. Adam grinned at him from the passenger seat.

They were sitting at a booth by the window when the bell chimed and Richard Gansey III practically ran inside. At the sight of him, Ronan could practically feel his brain cross out one of the items on his long list of worries. They stood to greet him and Gansey hugged them each, first Ronan then Adam then Ronan again, like he couldn’t give enough affection to both of them at the same time. Blue and Henry were right behind, smiling wide and bright. Henry gave Adam a brief hug, but at some indefinable time Ronan and Henry had invented a secret handshake, which they performed with excess concentration while Adam and Blue embraced. 

The most typifying greeting was Ronan and Blue. She went in for a hug but was lifted off her feet up to Ronan’s full height, a power move that earned from her a cry of indignation. Blue did a complicated twist that ended up with Ronan’s head under her arm, trapped in a headlock as her feet touched the ground again, the knuckles of her other hand scrabbling viciously over his buzzcut. Ronan growled and poked her in her sides, Blue releasing him with a yelp.

The worker at the counter shook his head at them judgementally while they laughed their asses off. Everyone except Gansey, who had a hand on his chest and was looking at them like he was lit up from the inside.

“Are you _crying_?” Blue asked him, a delighted, wicked grin on her face.

“No,” he said, but no one was convinced.

……………………………………

They ate a disgusting amount of pizza, as the trio offloaded weeks’ worth of stories from their intrepid adventures. Rainforests and ancient ruins and street food of ever increasing unfamiliarity. 

Even though one of them was missing, Noah’s soft smile and chuckling palpably gone in a way they couldn’t help, it was nice.

In Brazil, Henry had swallowed a bug and insisted they go to an emergency room, sticking to the story that he’d felt like he was dying even when he was discharged after a fifteen minute consult. The irony of it being ‘He of the RoboBee’ to swallow a flying insect was not lost. 

One of Gansey’s nebulous academic friends showed them around a dig site in Peru, and Blue began sarcastically calling Gansey ‘Indie’ half way through the story. Ronan began to use it as well, with as much glee as you can convey through a scowl, ensuring that it stuck, much to Gansey’s embarrassment. 

“At least I wasn’t the one that tried to covertly adopt a two-toed sloth,” Gansey shot back.

Blue gasped at him. “They’re tired all the time and hang out in _trees_. We are obviously family, I was obliged to claim them as my children.”

Everything they said was halfway to absurd, and Ronan, even as he teased and snapped out jokes only just on the right side of derisive, was quietly glad out of his mind that they’d had a good time and were home safe.

“And how are you guys?” Henry asked them excitedly. 

Adam glanced at him, looking away with a smile that Ronan hesitated to call bashful, but damn, it came close. “We’re good,” Adam said, “It’s been a really good few weeks.” He leaned back into where Ronan’s arm was strewn across his shoulder, eyes heavy and tired, but mouth upturned. Ronan wanted to take a photograph of him in that moment. All three of the faces opposite them softened and it suddenly became unbearable.

“I mean we’re alive so that’s a plus,” Ronan said, draining his coke.

………………………………..

They stayed until the middle of the night, then drove, the BMW leading the Camaro, to the motel down the road. They got one room together, two big beds, the trio piled into one and Ronan and Adam in the other. There was something about falling asleep in the same room as your closest friends that turned the world the right way up again. 

“Do you want to go back tomorrow?” Adam whispered into his throat, as the others were mumbling amongst themselves.

Ronan thought about it, thought about the last few weeks with just the two of them. At the same time that he wanted more of it, more of Adam and their dumb fights and their eclipsing kisses, he realised that things were profoundly, deeply good. Good in a way that he was confident wouldn’t end when they went back home or when Adam moved to his college dorm. “Up to you,” he said easily, and meant it.

Adam hummed. “Let’s decide tomorrow.”

………………………………

(Gansey, Blue, and Henry drove back to town late the next day, but Ronan and Adam stayed on the road for another week. Not going anywhere in particular, just holding each other’s space. Sending stupid photos of each other back to the rest of the gang, bickering about who got to drive, adding more flowers to the disc slot on Ronan’s stereo.

When they got back, Orla poked at the skin under Ronan’s tired eyes. “They’re a better blue when you’re happy.” He swatted her away but didn’t contradict her.

Opal placed a newspaper crown on Adam’s head, and he rolled his eyes at Blue’s ‘king of the road’ joke.

They still had a little time before semester started, and they’d fill it well, the group of them.

But the three weeks spent in aimless, wandering abandon with Adam, navigating the seas of each other’s moods and the curious stares of others, were perfect.

“We’ll do this again,” Adam said, as they crossed the Henrietta town line. “As soon as I’m on break we should disappear again.”

Ronan found his hand, clasped it tightly. “Anytime.”)

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe the magic they found was the friendships along the way. Lmao.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> As always, kudos are LOVE, comments are LIFE, and I'll adore you forever for either. <3
> 
> If you want to see me flail about life, swear a lot, and freak out about characters that are aggressively in love with each other, check out my [tumblr](http://ridleymocki.tumblr.com/)


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